In every such battle I saw, the English had the best of it, and in every such battle they were greatly outnumbered. . . . At Dover the first sharp thrust of hope penetrated our gloom. The battles over the cliffs proved that the British could and would fight for their own freedom, if for nothing else, and that they could do so against colossal odds. . . . The flash of the Spitfire’s wing, then, through the mist glare of the summer sky, was the first flash of a sharpened sword; they would fight, they would hold out.
Desperate to neutralize the RAF, the Luftwaffe began in mid-August to focus their attacks on British airfields and radar stations. The new raids were often quite effective, but they came at a high price in terms of lost bombers and airmen. Unaware of just how close they were to breaking the RAF’s back, the Germans concluded that they must expand their target list to include strategic installations around London and other large cities. Hitler was resistant to the idea of hitting London itself, fearful that this would strengthen English resolve. On the night of August 24, however, Göring’s pilots jettisoned some of their bombs over London on their way home from a raid against Thameshaven and Rochester. The bombs did not do much damage, but by striking the British capital the Germans gave Churchill the opportunity he had been waiting for. “Now that [the Germans] have begun to molest the capital,” he minuted the chiefs of his Air Staff on August 25, 1940, “I want you to hit them hard, and Berlin is the place to hit them.”
That very night a force of eighty-one Wellington and Hampden bombers made their way toward Berlin. Only about half the planes reached the city, which was covered by dense clouds. Like their German counterparts, they did not inflict much damage, but by blasting away some houses they changed the course of the war. Rather than continuing to concentrate on neutralizing the RAF, which would be necessary if the Reich were ever to invade Britain, Germany now focused on reprisal attacks against English cities, especially London. The British retaliated in kind, with Berlin a favorite target. In an important sense, World War II now turned into a contest to see which of these two great cities could hold out best under the new horror of repeated aerial bombardments.
Hitler’s worries about Londoners’ resolve notwithstanding, Germany was confident that it could win this contest. Since coming to power the Nazis had preached “air-mindedness,” the doctrine that a well-trained and disciplined civilian populace could withstand prolonged assaults from the air. The Reich Civil Defense League, which by the beginning of the war embraced 350,000 citizens, including one out of every six Berliners, held drills on fire suppression and seeking shelter. It appointed thousands of air-raid wardens to supervise civil defense procedures in specific neighborhoods. Armed with their authority, many of these figures became mini-Hitlers, pining for the chance to show that they too could lead the
The German government. . . will at once master the situation and stimulate the discipline of the people by broadcasting what has taken place in such a way as to electrify every German heart. A message will be broadcast to every home, stating that a dastardly attack on the capital has been made, that whole streets have been demolished, yet the
In reality, Goebbels was worried about how the Berliners would stand up under aerial bombardment. When Berlin actually received its first air attack on August 25, he instructed the Berlin newspapers to report that a few planes had flown over the city and dropped some incendiary bombs, which had damaged one hut. Shirer was amused to note the next day that “there was not a line [in the papers] about the explosive bombs which we all plainly heard.” Nor was there any mention about “the three streets in Berlin which have been roped off all day today to prevent the curious from seeing what a bomb can do to a house.”
For the people of Berlin the first air raid came as an enormous shock, despite all the “air-conditioning” they had gotten from their leaders. Air Marshal Göring, after all, had long boasted that he would change his name to “Maier” if a single enemy warplane reached German territory. Shirer recorded in his diary on August 26: “The Berliners are stunned. They did not think it could happen. . . . [But] last night the guns all over the city suddenly began pounding and you could hear the British motors humming directly overhead, and from all reports there was a pell-mell, frightened rush to the cellars by the five million people who live in this town.”
