Words

7 October was not the end of the Blitz or even of the Battle of Britain, but it is the end of my post-blogging of 1940, at least for now. The main reason for this is because I’m running out of primary sources, especially the Daily Mail. But as I think I’ve shown, in the preceding week or two the press (at least the parts available to me) seems to have decided that a turning point in the air battle had been reached: that the Luftwaffe had been decisively repulsed by day and that the invasion was not coming. Also, the early shock of the bombing of London had worn off — after three weeks or so it was clear that this was no knock-out blow — and the problems in the shelters were starting to be resolved by a number of well-publicised measures. So late September/early October turns out to be as good a place to stop as any.

That unanimity is actually a little surprising, given the lack of an agreed narrative earlier on. The newspapers didn’t always agree on what was ‘most’ important on particular day (as defined by the story chosen as the lead), nor did their opinion pieces focus on the same issues. A bit later on, while The Times and the Daily Mail featured extensive debates about whether Britain should initiate the bombing of German civilians in reprisal, the Manchester Guardian virtually ignored the issue. At times there seems to have been official pressure to promote certain stories, or at least to so lavishly provide reporters with access to government officials that they could hardly refuse to make it a big story. The Daily Mail‘s prominent coverage on 7 October of the past and future bombing of Germany would be an example of this — the map came direct from the Ministry of Information, along with the statistics. But it’s clear that the narratives produced at the time often don’t match the well-established narrative we now know and love. The periods which we remember as the Battle of Britain and the Blitz were much more tangled together than you might think from all the books you see written on one or the other (but almost never both).

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