The Bombing of Britian's Major Cities by Germany from 1940-1949

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The Bombing of Britian's Major Cities by Germany from 1940-1949

Hitler never truly wanted to go to war with Britain, he thought of

them more as a natural ally and that he would just make himself a

larger

empire in the East once he had defeated the USSR. However, this was

not the view of Winston Churchill. He was not prepared to make any

kind of a deal with Hitler. The German army then devised Operation Sea

Lion (the code name for the invasion on Britain). The main idea of

Operation Sealion was to primarily target the British Air Bases to

cripple the RAF (Royal Air Force).

The Battle Of Britain, a battle for the domination of the skies began

on the 1 July 1940 when the first German air craft crossed the English

Channel. However, even though the leader of the Luftwaffe, Hermann

Goering believed that he had superior planes and pilots, due to his

bad decision making, they were losing the battle which lead to him

changing his tactics.

In September 1940 the Germans changed tactics; they decided to attack

the city of London instead of targeting the RAF. This change in

tactics gave the RAF time to regroup however this new tactic was the

most devastating part of the war for the civilians.

This Blitzkrieg led to British cities being intensively bombed over

the next eight months. The fact that Hitler had changed from attacking

the RAF to attacking the cities, basically destroying Britain, it

became obvious that he had abandoned his plans to invade as Hitler

never would have wanted to inherit a city of rubble. Technically

speaking the Battle of Britain ended when the Blitz started.

The Germans mainly targeted Factories, Ports, Universities or other

industrial areas that were important to the British people such as

London, Liverpool, Oxford. Although most of the time the German

attacks rarely targeted civilian areas there were sometimes terror

bombings on the civilian areas.

The main reason that the Germans targeted London was because it was

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