Saturday, September 10, 2011

Blitz Street

I was watching Blitz Street on SBS TV last night,  a documentary about the GermanV2 bombings on England during WW2 and the narrator remarked that people can live in terror for about three weeks; after that time something happens in their brain, they simply cannot sustain fear for too long and so tend to put any apprehension they may have out of their minds. Apparently those who survived the countless V2 attacks believed that they would survive subsequent ones. This is a Wiki account of the Blitz:
The Blitz (from German, "lightning") was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed. More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, half of them in London. The following is an account of one of the survivors:
By the end of September - in twenty four days - 5,730 people had been killed and nearly 10,000 badly injured in London. Roads were cratered, telephone systems crippled, gas mains fractured, electricity supplies destroyed. Hospitals all over Greater London were damaged, some severely. But "life" went on - we still went to work or Home Guard or Air Raid duty. We all suffered from lack of sleep, food was severely rationed, it was easy to be hungry but we persevered - but then - we had no option. Electric, telephone and gas lines were patched and repaired but few homes (especially in the "poor" East End) had telephones at that time. I shall never forget the sour and acrid smell of burning and the next morning smell of burnt material (and some still smoldering), water soaked.
Whilst I was watching the old footage of the burning, disintegrating and collapsed buildings; the subsequent search for bodies underneath the rubble & personal accounts from survivors, I was reminded of 9/11 and its aftermath. But I was left feeling that the Blitz on London was much more devastating and widespread. I'm so glad that documentaries like Blitz Street, which celebrates the 70th Anniversary of London's longest night has been made because otherwise we'd be left thinking that 9/11 really was - as recent America rhetoric explains 'the day that changed the world'! Is it just that anything to do with America has to be over-inflated? Look at the spectacle they are providing the world at the moment with their build up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11 - the influx of soldiers on the streets of New York, the tightened security, the new construction that replaces the twin towers, the 9/11 memorial.  Why are some events remembered and others not? There will be no fanfare or monument erected for the nearly 1,000,000 people (soldiers and civilians - no way of verifying this figure) who have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq through USA and coalition attacks since 2001. So, here we are, on the eve of 9/11 waiting to see if the recent terrorist threats against American is real and wondering how many more people will be injured, die or be psychologically scarred for the remainder of their lives. And the world turns and the stomach churns...


  1. Excellent point about comparisons and perspectives. The mainstream media just laps it up , that is why a blog is a great way to get people thinking more critically. Thanks Julie


  2. Today is two days long of the anniversary of the start of the siege of Leningrad, on 8 September 1942. 4,477,881 Russian people died, a little more than a million of those civilians.