startribune.com

Katherine Kersten: In the face of fear, Brits stood firm

Published Oct 31 2001

After the events of Sept. 11, Americans are unsure how to conduct ourselves in a new atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. Many are asking, can a free society -- accustomed to security and prosperity -- stand up to the unprecedented threat we face?

The answer, resoundingly, is yes. To illustrate, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has invoked the example of London's response to Hitler's blitz of 1940 and '41. But few Americans remember the details of Londoners' valiant stand, which exemplifies the courage and determination that can carry a free people to victory over totalitarian foes.

In 1940, London found itself facing the full brunt of Hitler's wrath. With over 8 million people -- one-fifth of Great Britain's population -- the city was the center of British government, trade and finance: the equivalent of New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago rolled into one. To complete his dream of European domination, Hitler believed that he had to crush the spirit of London's people.

British authorities expected Londoners to react to a sustained air assault with panic and hysteria. They predicted that the first raid would kill 58,000 citizens and spark massive street riots, requiring thousands of soldiers to maintain order. Philosopher Bertrand Russell urgently demanded peace negotiations with the Nazis. If war came, he warned, "London would be one vast raving bedlam, the hospitals will be stormed, traffic will cease, the homeless will shriek for peace, the city will be a pandemonium."

In the first months of 1940, British authorities tried to prepare ordinary Londoners for the peril their families faced. All citizens were fitted with gas masks, with Mickey Mouse masks for the youngest children. Homeowners buried government-issued bomb shelters in their back yards. Most schools closed and families were wrenched apart, with hundreds of thousands of children evacuated. To deal with anticipated hordes of hysterical citizens, the government opened psychiatric clinics. "The people of England," wrote one observer, "knew that they stood on the brink of death."

On Sept. 7, 1940, the Luftwaffe launched its first major attack, providing a foretaste of things to come. Hundreds of Junkers blackened the skies over London. (An awed witness reported an "amazing, riveting" sight: wave after wave of "bombers hemmed in with fighters, like bees around their queen.") London's East End exploded in a massive inferno, its sprawling docks and surrounding neighborhoods engulfed in flame. A desperate fireman, calling for water pumps, put it simply: "The whole bloody world's on fire."

In short order, such deadly attacks became a way of life. In fact, between Sept. 7 and Nov. 13, 1940, Londoners experienced only one bomb-free night. As the raids wore on, most of the city's cherished landmarks sustained severe damage: Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London, the Law Courts, the British Museum. The House of Commons, seat of England's democracy, was gutted.

By May 1941, when the blitz ended, London was virtually unrecognizable. Fully 30 percent of the city had been destroyed or seriously damaged, including 300,000 houses. (One of every three Londoners was homeless at some point during the blitz.) Eighty thousand people were dead or severely injured. If the alerts sounded throughout the war were averaged, Londoners faced a threat to their lives once every 36 hours for over five years.

Yet contrary to expectations, the people of London endured the blitz with extraordinary self-control, and even good humor. They went stalwartly about their lives, vowing that "London can take it" and "we'll show old 'Itler." The city's "office girls" -- its clerks and secretaries -- epitomized the spirit of calm defiance. As one observer noted, they "came early and left late to the cacophonous chorus of bombs and guns and sirens. Poorly paid, they never complained. They rarely, if ever, arrived late."

The blitz unified London's citizens as never before. In the view of many commentators, it generated a remarkable kind of unselfishness, in which jealousies and grudges seemed to have no place. In bomb shelters, group singing kept spirits high. Though fires raged nearby, dance halls and theaters remained full, with patrons striving to cheer up the timid in their midst. Housewives opened canteens and first-aid posts in their homes, and Boy Scouts acted as messengers and orderlies. Drunkenness and workplace absenteeism actually declined, and the government's new psychiatric clinics closed for lack of business. Through it all, Londoners embraced a common motto: "We are all in the front lines now."

As London's citizens proved 60 years ago, free people are not the creatures of circumstance. On the contrary, we can choose how we respond to fear. We can choose panic and selfishness, or we can choose courage and the common good. Like Churchill, our leaders can aid in this process by acting with confidence, and conducting government business despite all hazards. Our media also have an important role to play, muting sensationalist headlines and reporting responsibly. But we ordinary Americans -- not the terrorists who seek to unnerve us -- will forge our own destiny. The way we handle this challenge will tell us a great deal about ourselves.

-- Anonymous, October 31, 2001

Answers

The problem is that this would apply to the Afghanis now more than to us. They are the ones getting blitzed. So if this basic philosophy is correct, standing firm and uniting in the face of a blitz, look out. We did see that reaction from North Viet Nam, remember?

-- Anonymous, October 31, 2001

One difference, which the Afghans may or may not understand or accept, is that we are not at war with Afghanistan, only with a particular faction. All of England was fighting for its future far more than Afghanistan is.

I don't, for instance, (yet) consider the WTC/Pentagon attacks to be an attempt to defeat and then take over the U.S. so much as making a statement. We might well eventually cave in to demands that do not have to do with our being taken over by invasion.

What I heard this morning is that electricity and water has been unavailable in ?Khandahar? for about 2 weeks, so a massive exodus for Pakistan has been stirred up. I don't think that is the result that we want.

-- Anonymous, October 31, 2001

Brooks, the reason that I post the way I do about the whole matter is that I don't think we are going to get *any* of the results we want by going about things the way we are. What do we want? Peace at home? Surely we cannot expect to "create" peace in the countless areas undergoing conflicts around the world. If that were possible we would have accomplished it 50 years ago and we wouldn't have had to stick our nose in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Iran, Bosnia, etc, etc.

I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out that we have been doing something wrong in the way we deal with other countries. Heck, we can't even hold our heads high over the Desert Storm issue. We fully supported Saddam during the Iran conflict, then spent billions to oppose him, poisoned thousands of our own ground forces, killed 75,000 +/- Iraqis, including civilians, and then left him in charge. No, we are not going to get the results our public wants in the Middle East. In fact we are not even talking about handling it in any other way than direct armed conflict. Too bad for us all. I still think this is just a macro version of the Hatfields and the McCoys. And that feud didn't end until the two sides got weary of the carnage and sat down to work out an agreement.

-- Anonymous, October 31, 2001