Did anyone else watch the real Blitz Spirit with Lucy Worsley last night?

[Biscoffaddict]

Over the last year we’ve been told more than ever that we need to find our Blitz Spirit and Keep Calm and Carry On etc, only for this programme to blow the whole thing apart and reveal it was actually one great big myth put out by the government to try and boost morale. Propaganda basically. There was no ‘Blitz Spirit’ and its just a made up narrative that’s pushed on us by the media and the establishment for the last 80 years.

If you didn’t watch it I’d highly recommend it. One of the best things I’ve watched in ages.

Anyone who's studied history knows this. All these vacuous comparisons to what happened 80 years ago make my eyes roll.

My gran moved from Wales to Coventry in 1940, 2 months before the blitz, after being orphaned (father killed in the war, mother committed suicide). She did not find it reassuring or as though people were making the best of it, although as a child she may have had a different perspective. She remembers looting, poverty, violence and being abused by the people who fostered her. This documentary sounds interesting

If you liked that, try Chastise by Max Hastings, especially if all you really know about the Dam Busters is from a 1950's movie...

I am well aware that she’s a historian, @Biscoffaddict, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s selected her evidence - however authentic her sources - with an entirely unbiased eye.

As anyone who’s ever written an academic essay will know, you choose your material to back up whatever argument you’re making.

Have you watched the programme @GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER? It was more a separation of fact from spin than an argument being made.

I watched the 1st 30 mins but DD and i wanted to watch something else so i switched over. Ill watch the remaining hour tomorrow.

Keep calm and carry on. How on earth was that expected with no homes, no power, death, continued bombing...

Watching now. My grandad was a fire fighter in the blitz my other granda was a POW of the Japanese. My grandmothers worked in munitions. Theo's pandemic is not even close to the blitz there was a massive increase in sexual offences in the blackout. No emergency contraception or legal abortion. This pandemic is awful with monumental govt failure but it is by jo way comparable to the blitz. The propaganda then and now is the same

I've just watched it and I was gripped the whole way through.
My Nan was a child in London during the blitz. I wished I'd asked her more about it when she was alive.
My grandad (from Republic of Ireland) once started to talk about the war and she got very annoyed with him telling him that he had no idea what the realities of war were like.

@Daisychainsandglitter I think my Nan would be annoyed now, hearing the romanticised idea of what it was like to live through the Blitz.

Just watched this on catch up

Brilliant

Watched last night after seeing this thread.
I have read around this subject for years and found the programme a refreshing view of what happened.
My understanding is that Londoners in particular did try to look out for each other and between them and the voluntary organisations, plugged the gaps left by the government in terms of assistance. This was of huge benefit to the government of course, who then began to package it as the ‘Blitz Spirit’ which did help them in terms of propaganda. Of course, this happened in other parts of the country as well but in London the Blitz lasted for months and months. In the years since, this has definitely become romantasised and I imagine made it difficult for some people to talk about the awful experiences that they went through.

There are some remarkably silly, reactionary posts on this thread.

Academic research into the extent to which the ‘Blitz spirit’ was to an extent a government-manufactured narrative is well-established — it was not invented by Lucy Worsley, or in response to COVID.

No one is suggesting that people were not also stoical, resourceful and brave, but it’s important to recognise that the narrative was a crafted, official one, both for propaganda and morale-boosting purposes.

For instance, one of the few large-scale government studies into the psychological effects of the Blitz — in Hull (95% of houses damaged, almost half the population made homeless) completed in 1941– showed survivors behaving in exactly the way one would expect after prolonged bombing — crying, shaking, psychosomatic illnesses etc. But then again, the official report was selectively interpreted to lay the groundwork for carpetbombing German cities.

I generally find LW’s programmes dumbed-down and irritating, but this one drew my attention to something I’d been unaware of — the huge pet cull of 1939.

I will watch this. I love Lucy.
My dad was born just after the war, but I remember him telling me that so much of the landscape in the towns and cities was bomb damage that hadn't been cleared, even in the 60s. Just whole areas missing, or rubble.

My issue is that it has been said before on TV documentaries and anniversary retrospectives.
Maybe Lucy Worsley programmes aren't the ones for me.

@OldRailer

My issue is that it has been said before on TV documentaries and anniversary retrospectives. Maybe Lucy Worsley programmes aren't the ones for me.

Absolutely it has. But LW history programmes aren't aimed at people who are historically well-informed, or who might regularly read history books, they're aimed at people who think that a presenter flitting about in mob caps and farthingales with an archly-raised eyebrow leavens the weight of Difficult Stuff, and her scripts can probably only assume the most basic knowledge of whatever period she's doing.

What is rarely talked about in the 'blitz spirit' discussion are the number of sexual assaults that increased in the black out. Muggings and murders also increased.

My mil was exactly the generation to totally fall for the blitz spirit myth mind you so were my parents but they engaged in critical thinking. She seriously believed there was no crime at all during the war.

So many people of a certain age like to constantly imagine we were all great then and Britain basically won the war single handedly. And we're all awful now by comparison. Quite damaging in some ways

@SamTylerTiler

What is rarely talked about in the 'blitz spirit' discussion are the number of sexual assaults that increased in the black out. Muggings and murders also increased.

Yes the blackout ripper, Gordon Cummins, being but one.

Very well put @Fleapit

Interesting the Blitz meant the East End of London being bombed initially. People could have dinner at The Savoy and book a bed in the cellars. 3 miles down the road people were being killed or made homeless.

@tobee

My mil was exactly the generation to totally fall for the blitz spirit myth mind you so were my parents but they engaged in critical thinking. She seriously believed there was no crime at all during the war.

So many people of a certain age like to constantly imagine we were all great then and Britain basically won the war single handedly. And we're all awful now by comparison. Quite damaging in some ways

More ageist nonsense and MIL bashing.

I don’t think it blows the myth of blitz spirit, it reinforced it for me, people got on with it remarkably.
It’ll be similar how we look back collectively at the pandemic, we could just look back at the clapping, the volunteers, the amazing vaccine, captain Tom etc OR we could look back at the bad behaviour from some, lockdown parties, the summer 2020 protests, the anti mask antivac protesters. The truth is it is all of that, the good and the bad and the blitz was the same.
P.S I am a big Lucy Worsley fan, love her!

@Fleapit regarding the pet cull of 1939, my Nan kept her cat alive during the War by feeding it on really weird food such as scones!! It helped that her mum ran a grocers.

A lot hinges on how you read "us" in this sentiment. It's conveniently ambiguous to say the least.

To be fair though @DGRossetti people like my Nan definitely needed a Allied victory as she had Jewish ancestry through her dad & was really scared of a German Invasion.

Actually the Germans made very detailed plans for the Invasion which was almost carried out but for the hard work of the Battle of Britain pilots.
The head of the Einsatzgruppen Dr Franz Six had already made detailed plans to shoot the Manchester Jews after the Invasion.
So my Nan didn't know it but she was right to be afraid.

That's why despite the obvious horrors of the Blitz throughout the UK it was desperately important to 'carry on' or at least give the impression that people were coping.