City refuses to be beaten by bombs

Jun 18 2007 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

THROUGHOUT World War II, Liverpool took more hits from German bombers than any other British town outside London. Emma Johnson looks back at how the city reacted

WHILE the horrors of World War II touched everyone across the United Kingdom, Liverpool was without a doubt one of its greatest victims.

As the main gateway between Britain and the USA, Liverpool was a key target for Hitler and, after enjoying the quiet period of the “phoney war” which allowed preparations to be made to evacuate children from Merseyside, aerial bombardment was heavy and sustained from the summer of 1940.

Thousands of youngsters were sent to stay with complete strangers in the relative safety of North Wales and Cheshire.

Unfortunately, the lack of fighting lulled people into a false sense of security, and many children returned home just in time for the real war to begin, only for them to flee the city once more.

By the time the German Luftwaffe retreated from its attack over British soil in 1942, almost 4,000 people had been killed and 3,500 seriously injured across Merseyside, the most lives lost in provincial England.

When the bombing stopped, some 554 unidentified bodies were interred in a communal grave at Anfield cemetery.

The death toll was twice that of Birmingham, and compared to the 30,000 lives lost in all of London.

Streets and neighbourhoods across the city were razed, ships were sunk and the docks were badly damaged.

Many of the city’s best-known buildings also took devastating hits including the Customs House, the Cotton Exchange and Lewis’s department store.

And, to add insult to injury (in an effort to keep up morale across the rest of the country), much of Liverpool’s Blitz devastation was hushed up by the Government, for fear of feeding the German propaganda machine.

After suffering serious losses in daylight raids on Britain, the German Luftwaffe switched instead to a campaign of night-time bombing in the late summer of 1940. Major port cities like Liverpool were top of the list of targets as Hitler tried to strangle Britain’s wartime supply gateway.

Liverpool first felt the force of the German hostility on the evening of August 28, 1940. With docks, railways and factories sought out for destruction, it was a terrifying time for all.