User talk:07nolj

SCRIPT

I choose the London Blitz as my topic for this assignment, I choose it because my family was effected by if directly. My grandmother and grandfather both lived in London during the Blitz, my grandfather was a pilot, and flew Spitfire fighter planes and my grandmother was an art teacher. My mum and my aunt both grew up in the bombed out streets of London as they were born at the very end of the war. I've always had a great respect for the Battle of Britain and the ensuing Blitz but never knew very much on either, just knew very general information. Hopefully, by the end of my speech you will learn as much as I have about what took place.

I choose to be Arthur Smith in my speech, his name is unimportant but he works as a tobacconist in London who luckily, didn't get his store bombed during the Blitz and therefore can look on the Blitz as a primary source but still have his hopes high that things will work out for him. He comes to you today to tell you about things he has seen and rumours he as heard, although he will divide the fact from fiction.

The main difficulties I faced with my research was that some of my sources conflicted. Some gave very general dates on the end of the Blitz (For example 2 sources stated that the Blitz ended in mid May, whereas one source gave the date May 10th and another source said it ended in late May, luckily they all had the same year) so I forced to make educated decisions on which sources to trust and which to leave. My sources clashed several times but I could usually fish out the liars through consistency or reputation.

The London Blitz is heavily generalised, and many of you will believe misconceptions about the Blitz. This speech was written by me to hopefully educate on the actual events, causes, background, arguments and key terms related to the Blitz.

START

Good Morning, my name is Arthur Smith and I've been brought in-front of you today to tell you about the London Blitz. I remember that the Blitz started in September 1940, the 7th if I'm not mistaken. It ended after 43'000 deaths and 1 million homes had been destroyed, morale had it's ups and downs but one thing was certain, London was never going to be the same.

I'm not anyone important by any means, however I do run a popular tobacco shop on Bayswater Road, everyday hundreds of people line up to get a packet of cigarettes they bring with them stories about the Blitz, I can usually tell if they're true or false but sometimes you get some real dozes. When the war started I slept in my shop at night, but now, with hundreds of bombs being dropped every-night I go down to the underground railways with thousands of other survivors just to sleep. It's quite amazing to watch tens of thousands of people pour out of the subways at the same time. People, despite the bombings at night, return to work as usual by day, as if nothing happened... or at least, they try.

London has been badly effected by the Blitz, but people all over are still trying to just pretend that things aren't so bad. The media talks of how many bombers we shoot down every night, I know for a fact that the real number is under half. Gas-masks, now there's something that's effected us, everyone was given one, even babies, dogs, I saw a gas proof pram go by one time. Some people are taking the gas threat too seriously, and others aren't taking it seriously enough. Some children are using the gas masks as weapons, many women use the mask as a carry bag for makeup. One of the worst things, the blackout, every light had to be masked at night so that German bombers couldn't see the cities. it doesn't work though, some RAF friends of mine say that you can still see the city fine even during the blackout. Some people argue that the blackout is better then just leaving all the lights on, but the thing they don't know about is that "more children were killed on roads in the blackout then in peace time, even though there were fewer cars". Some butchers I used to know started to slaughter any meat they could get their hands on, including dogs, cats, and even rare cases of.... children.

The AA guns, it means Anti-Aircraft but to the Londoners it's more of a moral thing. When hundreds of AA guns open up on the bombers at the same time they noise is wicked, the glass starts to smash around you and you can hear yells coming from all around London of patriotic citizens rooting for the AA squads. General Fredrick, I think that's what his name was, he's in charge of the AA service in London, he doubled the amount of AA guns in London, that did wonders to the moral but little to the Luftwaffe.

The Luftwaffe, (Luft-va-fur) it means Wolves of the Air. It's what the German bombers call themselves, they are are worst enemy and the RAF's bitter rivals. I hear that the Luftwaffe suffered a less than 1% casualty rate after the Blitz, all those AA guns, such little results. The word Blitz come from the German word Blitzkrieg meaning 'lightning strike' although now we all know the word Blitz as destroy. Battling the Luftwaffe every night is the RAF, the Royal Air Force, the best of the best. The RAF was nearly wiped out by September 7 but a change in tactics by Hitler allowed the RAF to strengthen themselves. Apart from the AA guns, the Barrage Balloons also destroyed enemy planes. They're large blimp like things that hover above London with thick chains tying them to the ground, when a plane flys under it the chain rips the plane to shreds. We call German's Gerry's too.

The Battle of Britain was a victory for the British, with the RAF beating the Luftwaffe. However, after repeated attacks by the Luftwaffe fighter planes the RAF was beginning to lose, badly. Of course, the RAF didn't tell anyone that they were losing, people believed that they were winning, and so did the Germans, this combined with one other factor resulted in Hitler changing tactics. Hitler promised the German people that not a single bomb would be dropped on Berlin, the RAF, in my opinion, then bombed Berlin just to pull Hitler's strings. It worked, Hitler became so furious that the RAF dared to bomb Berlin that he gave a special speech to the German people, explaining that he would not allow the English to get away with the attack. Just to prove a point, Hitler changed the strategy of the Luftwaffe from bombing airfields, docks and convoys to bombing London. This decision lost Hitler the war of the air. While the Luftwaffe bombed London every night the RAF rebuilt their aerial fleet and when the Luftwaffe pulled out of London in May 1941 to fight elsewhere the RAF was strong again.

The Gerry's say that war is war, that in war anything goes. We never did anything like this the Germans. We didn't deserve to be treated so badly.

After the Blitz, rationing stayed with us for almost another decade, there was rationing for clothes, shoes, food, building materials. There were restrictions on what you could, and how much you could buy. I'm only allowed to sell one pack of cigarettes to each customer, but I've had cases of men getting their children to go get them cigarettes and then going and getting another pack themselves, I let it happen. After the war, people who had had their houses destroyed by the Blitz were compensated by being given Pre-Fabricated houses, they were bungalows type buildings mad to temporarily house homeless citizens. We called them Pre-Fabs. The Royal Family, despite having their palace bombed several times, stayed in London. This made all of us feel safe. Funny thing is, even while the Blitz roared outside, men were still in pubs at night drinking their sorrows, taxis and buses still functioned, although, there was a lot less.

I think the worst case I heard of was one bomb that destroyed a school at night, 350 people were using the school as shelter, none survived.

I hope that you have learned something today.