Blitz Spirit, compiled by Jaqueline Mitchell

Although the Blitz was a relatively short time within the history of World War II, it was a particularly decisive situation during the war because it occurred during a point where the United Kingdom was fighting nearly alone against Nazi Germany before the United States entered into the war and before Hitler betrayed the Soviet Union and invaded them. The destruction of the Blitz was notable as well as the result that the attacks seemed to have on the British people. While the British people as a whole seem to have been able to endure the attacks with a strong degree of fatalism and (in at least some cases) wit, it appears that overall the Blitz and the British experience during World War II had negative consequences for the well-being of Great Britain as a whole, including a growing acceptance of socialism which sapped the British of their moral sense, their empire, and their ability to stand firm against the evils of the Cold War and the contemporary era. If Churchill was a great leader able to inspire the British to noble acts of heroism, it would be a long time after that before Great Britain asked its people to make noble sacrifices for a life worth living–probably all the way down to Thatcher’s time.

If this book does not go into such details, that is easy enough to understand. This book is largely based on primary documentation of the life of the people of Great Britain during the time of the blitz, and if it is not a perfect book it offers an excellent look at a variety of aspects of life during that period. Included are a number of speeches, including a few by Winston Churchill, who does a great job here seeking to encourage the people of the United Kingdom to resist Nazi efforts to break their will through persistent airstrikes. There are examples of government propaganda, although it does not come off poorly here given the life and death aspects of life in this particular situation. There are letters and even excerpts from songs, pictures of graffiti, accounts of ordinary people going about their day to day lives, and seeing the way that other people were coping with what happened to them. In fact, I would venture to say that this book is a classic example of the way that I like compilers to make up such compendia of historical situations by a keen study of their topics of choice and a pleasant and sensible arrangement of primary documents that give the reader a good picture of how people understood their times at the time.

In terms of its structure, this book is not organized into chapters or sections but rather is roughly chronologically organized with materials. It begins with an introduction by the compiler, then includes a mixture of speeches and writings by recognized people and anonymous texts that spring from bureaucratic sources. So, for example, we go from Churchill’s “We Shall Never Surrender” speech to documents about the ‘Fourth Defense Service’ and “Things To Do In An Air Raid.” After another Churchill speech in “Their Finest Hour” we move to air raid precautions for animals, a joke drawing about Goering (there are many humorous and pointed drawings sprinkled throughout this delightful text). There is a discussion on manning the Home Guard from a Home Guard manual, as well as a selection from “London Pride” by Noel Coward. Throughout the rest of the book we get a couple more speeches by Churchill in “We Must Be Undaunted” and “We Shall Not Fail Or Falter” as well as “We Shall Come Through,” but we also get plenty of discussions on such mundane matters as how to take shelter in one’s community and how to wear one’s gas mask. There are also discussions from air raid wardens, firemen, General Raymond E. Lee (on the attack on Westminster), and discussions about the fatalism that resulted from the bombing and its effects. The total work is 200 pages and it makes a fine compendium of the history of a dramatic time in World War II. If your interest includes the intersection of social history and military history in a focused fashion like this one and you are interested in the topic of the failure of Germany’s strategic bombing of the United Kingdom in World War II, this is an easy book to recommend.