All Quiet on the Home Front by Richard van Emden Steve Humphries

Author:Richard van Emden, Steve Humphries [Richard van Emden, Steve Humphries]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I, Europe, Great Britain, General
ISBN: 9781473891968
Google: 2P0sDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2017-04-30T00:27:37+00:00

After the March raids there would be only one further raid, in May, which met with any success. German desperation was beginning to show and for the final three months of the war there was not a single raid. In all, there had been fifty-three Zeppelin and fifty-seven aeroplane raids during the war, resulting in 1,413 deaths and 3,407 injuries. London had suffered heavily, with over 800 civilians being killed and 1,500 injured in air raids on the capital in 1917 and 1918. Coastal towns such as Ramsgate and Margate in Kent were also heavy sufferers. Dover experienced 113 alarms, and bombs were dropped on twenty-nine occasions. There, people had taken to nearby caves, which could temporarily accommodate up to 25,000. They were essentially making provision for their own safety, in the absence of any co-ordinated government initiatives.

Many of the interviewees who spoke about raids in the First World War often recalled that the attacks in the Second World War were worse. This is true. During the Blitz of 1940 and 1941, 13,000 tons of high explosive were dropped on London, compared with a meagre 280 tons dropped in the whole of the 1914–18 war. The Blitz alone claimed 43,000 lives by mid-1941 and actually outnumbered military deaths at the front. The two wars fought on the home front are clearly not comparable in terms of deaths and damage caused. However, hindsight should not mask the profound shock and horror suffered by the British public when war’s brutality was delivered from the air for the very first time. The sense of violation was profound, and the indiscriminate destruction that was wrought appeared fearsome to a people unused to such emotions or witnessing such sights.

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